


Rediscovered Territory

by antigrav_vector



Series: 890fifth prompt fills [3]
Category: Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Iron Man (Comic), Iron Man (Movies), Iron Man - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: 890fifth, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Get Together, M/M, Memory Loss, Misunderstandings, Natasha is just done with these idiots and their pining, Not Canon Compliant, Oblivious Steve Rogers, Pre-Relationship, Steve is Captain Oblivious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2015-01-28
Packaged: 2018-03-09 10:55:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3247040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antigrav_vector/pseuds/antigrav_vector
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>890fifth, round nine: Ambiguous fandom; pulls from MCU and 616 canon.</p><p>Direct sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/3177244">home is where ____</a>.</p><p>After Tony shows up, he gets Steve out, and when he discovers that Steve doesn't remember what happened between stopping Doom from destroying the Verrazano and the rescue, he gets upset and locks himself in his workshop. Steve of course, is baffled.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rediscovered Territory

"So what the hell happened in there," Tony prompted, as he pulled up into a hover over the ruins of Doom's base.

Steve, securely tucked in the crook of Tony's arm and pinned to the front of the armour, shrugged as best he could. His shoulder twinged at the movement. "Not sure?"

That got Tony's attention. "What does that mean?"

"Last thing I remember clearly is watching the last Doombot fall into the Hudson and explode on impact. You showed up about fifteen minutes after I woke up in that cell. All I've got in between is a blank."

"Ah." Tony sounded vaguely nonplussed for no reason Steve could see. A silence fell and lengthened. Steve tried waiting him out, but got no response worth mentioning; Tony ignored the question and took off for Stark Tower instead, leaving Steve wondering what the fuss had been about.

If he wanted answers, though, he'd be forced to try to get Tony to shout over the wind and the roar of the repulsor jets. His mouth flattening out into an irritated grimace, Steve suppressed a sigh. He might not be able to easily hear Tony over the noise, but with JARVIS filtering the noise out for him Tony could hear _him_ clearly. Probably better than he could have over the comms.

There was something Tony didn't want to talk about, and Steve wasn't sure what to think about that.

Granted, they hadn't gotten off to a good start. Their first meeting had almost immediately devolved into a fight. But in the intervening six months, that initial tension had eased considerably. They could talk about more or less anything, now, ranging from history to music to whatever bizarre pop culture fad was featured on the television that week. It bothered Steve that Tony was shutting him out, now. Hiding.

But from what? And _why_?

Steve decided to wait until they were back at the Mansion to pursue the topic, hunching down a little to make his profile smaller, hoping that would make the wind cut at his skin less. It didn't. The two hour long flight passed slowly and in relative silence.

By the time they arrived at the mansion, Steve was cold enough to be numb and Tony was thoroughly on edge.

"I'm going down to the workshop," Tony told him the moment they'd touched down, "and don't follow me. I'm going to have to do some stuff that's too dangerous for spectators."

The action seemed off, somehow. There were only minor cosmetic damages to the armour, as far as Steve could tell. "Okay, but what about--"

Tony cut him off with an abrupt gesture. "Nope, no time. Gotta get this done."

Steve watched him go, not bothering to stifle the aggravated growl that Tony's avoidance tactics always seemed to engender. "If you're not out of there in two hours, I'm coming in after you," he called after his friend, managing to get the words out just before Tony jogged down the stairs.

All he got in response was a vague wave that could have meant anything, but just felt dismissive.

A presence at his elbow made him turn. "Natasha," he couldn't help the small smile. "What are you doing here?"

Natasha ignored the question. "He was very upset when Doom grabbed you this morning, you know."

Steve raised one eyebrow. "We're friends and teammates. He cares. That not exactly news."

"Really."

Her dry tone was cutting, and made Steve want to wince. He replied in kind, though it hadn't been a question. "Really. What's your point?"

She rolled her eyes. "Trying to stop you two from being idiots. Seems to be a lost cause."

"What?"

"Think about it, Steve. I'm going to find James and a hot shower."

Without another word, she was gone, leaving Steve more confused than he had been before the cryptic conversation.

Right. So obviously _something important_ had happened in the short timespan he couldn't remember. And it had made Tony upset and Natasha call them idiots.

Okay, she did that last fairly often, and Steve had to admit that usually they did kinda deserve it.

But that wasn't the point. The point was that he had no idea what that _something important_ could possibly be, and asking Tony was no help at all. Nor was Natasha.

Shaking his head, Steve decided to take Natasha's advice. It might help, or it might not, but he knew he needed the time to settle, anyway. So he climbed the stairs to his room, grabbed up his pencils and sketchbook, and headed for the rooftop patio that had become his favorite place to sit in the summer. Pausing, he surveyed the small area and took a moment to clear his mind as best he could. The small space was maybe three meters by four, ringed by an elegantly minimalistic steel and glass fence, and paved with large square tiles of what Steve was fairly sure was terracotta ceramic. A small wrought iron table with two chairs stood in the far corner, overlooking the grounds and a small chunk of Central Park.

Pulling out one of the chairs, Steve dropped his sketchbook on the table long enough to settle himself comfortably in it. Ensconced in his usual sunny spot, Steve picked his sketch book back up, opened it to a blank page, and just let his pencil wander, doodling whimsical shapes that eventually would (probably) resolve into a coherent piece, and generally letting his subconscious have free rein so he could think about the growing mystery behind Tony’s behaviour.

It took a lot to spook Tony. In all their years of friendship, Steve had never known him to avoid danger, and he was almost as fierce in defending the rest of the team as he was his company or designs, if he thought someone or something was after them. It was one of the aspects of Tony that he liked the most. He was not only generous with funding the Avengers, he was loyal and dedicated to them. But, Steve sighed quietly to himself, when it came to emotions, Tony didn't seem to quite know what to do with himself. He expressed them in material ways as much as possible, or spent time with his robots.

It was just a quirk of Tony's that they'd all had to acknowledge and accept, really. And after all, it wasn't like Tony was ever going to want anything more from him -- from any of team -- than friendship. He prized that above almost anything else, with the possible exception of his armour, and had gone to some incredible lengths to keep it. And that was without taking the time to mention the socialites that seemed to just materialize on his arm effortlessly when he wanted a date.

Even when he had a dame on his arm, though, Tony made sure to keep up with the team. Inviting them all to pizza or a movie every so often.

Refocusing on his drawing, Steve made a face. All these thoughts of Tony had resulted in him drawing the man, hands blurs of motion, hunched over his work table with the chest plate of the armour gutted under his hands, the electronics that were normally inside it trailing over the edge of the table and waiting to be tucked back into place, good as new. Or maybe better. The details of the drawing had been left to the imagination, but that didn't detract from its appeal. As far as he was concerned, anyway.

But then, he'd always found Tony too appealing for his own good.

And he was no closer to working out what Natasha had meant, for all that he’d spent much of the afternoon rehashing anything he knew about Tony that might be even tangentially relevant.

Flipping the sketchbook shut, he leaned back against the wall behind him and closed his eyes, letting the late afternoon sunshine turn his vision blood red.

Why couldn't Natasha just come out and say what she meant? She had to know how bad he was at these kinds of guessing games. Then again, she might just be doing it for her own amusement.

A glance at his watch revealed that the two hours he'd threatened Tony with were nearly up. Maybe he'd have to force the issue and ask Tony directly. Again. Maybe repeatedly.

This would only continue to bother both of them, otherwise. Tony's immediate decision to run and hide in his workshop had been rather telling, on that score.

Steve only peripherally noticed the group lounging in the entertainment room as he passed by. Jan had called out a greeting, and he'd replied on automatic, and then he was past the room and at the head of the stairs leading down to Tony's sanctuary.

For once, Steve wasn't assaulted by the pounding bass of Tony's preferred music as he approached. The short hallway was almost silent, in fact, giving it an eerie abandoned feel. Steve paused and shook his head to clear it. The strange thoughts he was having weren't helping his focus at all.

The workshop had a short length of wall along the hallway that was made of bulletproof shatterproof glass, which Tony had upgraded further to also allow him to turn it opaque on demand. He used it for privacy when he was working on something sensitive.

And when he wanted to hide from someone.

Right now, the wall was, predictably, dark. On his approach, though, the holographic keypad popped up automatically, as usual, so it was clear that Tony hadn't gone the extra step and put the workshop on lockdown.

 _That_ , thankfully, had only ever happened three times, that Steve knew about, and all of them had involved immediate physical threats to Tony himself or to Pepper.

Taking a calming breath and trying to center himself for the confrontation that would surely follow hard on the heels of his arrival, Steve punched in his access code. It was a minor miracle that it worked, from his perspective, but Steve had long ago learned not to question good luck.

"Not now, Pepper," Tony's voice sounded from beneath his most recent automotive restoration project, a sleek dark blue number with silver stripes that he'd said was called a Shelby Cobra. It had started out in poor shape; the right side mirror had been missing, the leather of the interior cracking and nearly destroyed, the paint peeling off the trunk, and the transmission busted. Now, it positively gleamed in the fluorescent lights of the workshop and Steve had to work not to stare at it covetously.

Setting the thought aside, he cleared his throat. "I'm not Pepper."

Tony disappeared farther under the car's chassis. "Thought I asked you not to come in here."

"I did tell you I'd come down. And you're obviously not doing anything too hazardous right now."

Tony sighed before hooking his left hand around the left front tire and pulling himself out into the light. "What do you want?"

Steve crossed his arms and set his feet, hoping to convey without words that he wasn't about to budge on this. "I want you to tell me what has you so upset."

Tony laughed. "I'm not upset."

"I don't believe that for a minute," Steve retorted. "You got upset over something almost the minute you got me out of that base, and, given no evidence to the contrary, I can only assume it was something I said or did."

"You did nothing wrong, Capsicle."

Tony hadn't called him that -- on or off the battlefield -- in months. "Try again, Tony. And I thought we were past the attempts to annoy me with nicknames."

The statement got him a grimace and Tony's upper half disappeared back under his car, messing with a torque wrench, judging by the sounds coming from the narrow space, with his feet planted solidly on the floor for leverage. "I'm serious, _Steve_."

Steve pinched the bridge of his nose. This was getting them strictly nowhere. "Then would you just _tell me what happened_?"

"Nothing happened," Tony insisted.

There was a pause, a sigh, and then Tony abruptly reappeared to the sound of the creeper's wheels rattling on the concrete. "I really don't want to talk about it, okay?"

"Why?" Steve stared at him, suddenly unsure of his footing.

With a sardonic expression, Tony quipped, "you don't want to know what goes through my head, Steve. Trust me on that one."

"That's where you're wrong," Steve replied without thinking about the words. Tony snorted, disbelieving, and Steve shook his head, the sharp motion keeping Tony oddly silent, before he continued, more carefully. "Sure, your genius would make it difficult for me to follow, but that doesn't matter. And it's not like the rest of us aren't also facing down demons of one sort or another. Do you have any idea how often I wake up out of nightmares? I don't know where you got the idea that you're such a trial to be around, or that it would be a chore for the rest of us, but it's not true." Now Tony was outright staring at him. "Yeah," Steve conceded, "you can be a pain in the ass when you want to be," he let his tone imply _like now_ , "but it's a defense mechanism. Took me a while to figure that out."

This time when the silence fell, neither of them moved for what felt like an hour, and then Tony was suddenly on his feet, toe-to-toe with Steve.

The moment stretched until Tony broke it, tentatively bringing a hand up to Steve's shoulder. "You'll have to stop me if I'm reading this wrong," he said, his words almost lost in the background noise of the workshop.

And then Steve forgot all about the workshop, because the hand on his shoulder trailed up to bury itself in his hair, and Tony was kissing him.

 _What-- I don't-- but-- that wasn't what I meant--_ was quickly drowned out by the knowledge that he liked it. That while he hadn't ever thought about this, the emotion had been there for what seemed like forever.

After a long few seconds, he managed to kick himself into action and kiss back, getting a _very_ pleased sound out of Tony that made something hot coil in his gut.

It took a while for the kiss to break, and then Steve discovered that his hands had wandered without his knowledge or permission, ending up on Tony's hip and ass, respectively. Tony went languid as he leaned against Steve, and put his own hands on Steve's shoulder blades in something of a proprietary gesture, his arms somehow fitting under Steve’s perfectly. It felt good. They stayed that way for a while, neither of them inclined to speak. For his part, Steve was enjoying the closeness and the solid core of warmth that Tony radiated, reveling in the feeling of shifting muscle under his hands as Tony relaxed. It was surprisingly comfortable. Why hadn't they done this before? Natasha was right; they were idiots.

"So I might have blurted out that I wanted this. Earlier today," Tony said, looking away at a spot on the workshop ceiling and surprising Steve out of his dazed analysis of what had just happened. "Part of your blank spot," he explained, reminding Steve of the point of his visit. "And I might have freaked out a little?"

With a reluctantly amused huff, Steve retorted, "I'll say."

Tony winced.

Before Tony could pull away, though, Steve tightened his grip and added. "So what happens now?"

Tony forced Steve to loosen his grip a little and pulled back enough to raise an eyebrow at him. "Well, we probably need to talk and work out what we want out of this... whatever it is, but for now, maybe dinner?"

Considering that for a moment, Steve nodded. "I can work with that."


End file.
